The price of losing your spellbook??

[Dwimmerlied]

If my reading of the SRD RAW are correct, losing your spellbook is an absolute nightmare...

SRD[h=4]Replacing and Copying Spellbooks[/h]A wizard can use the procedure for learning a spell to reconstruct a lost spellbook

Learning spells...

No matter what the spell’s source, the wizard must first decipher the magical writing (see Arcane Magical Writings, above). Next, she must spend a day studying the spell. At the end of the day, she must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell’s level)...If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into her spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook, below).

Writing spells costs time and money (100gp and 1 day per page)

Apparently you have to learn the spells all over again, unless you can manage to get access to the spells you have previously learned in the form of a borrowed spellbook and can succeed at the check to understand another's writings (strangely, RAW, this means that you must relearn spells you already learned from, say, captured spellbooks and such, though preparing them from borrowed spellbooks doesn't require the learn check).

In game and out, this is a logistical nightmare. It makes sense that a Wizard losing a spellbook is going to be painful, but this kind of thing could grind a campaign to a halt!

Does everybody do this RAW? Are there other interpretations? How do you streamline the whole process?

Have you (or your players) ever been in this situation? Share your experiences!

 

[MarkB]

I've never seen it happen, but it is a good reason to keep a backup spellbook safely stored away. I've seen that done with several wizard characters.

 

[jonesy]

I second the backup spellbook(s).

If you want to get rid of the whole losing your spellbook problem there's the Eidetic Spellcaster from Dragon #357 where the wizard loses her familiar and the ability to scribe scrolls, but in return uses his memory as his spellbook and gets to throw the book away.

Having said that, the way we did it was we allowed the wizard to backup his book from memory because it seemed dumb to have a character who had been using these spells all this time suddenly not know how they were done as if the book was the wizard and the wizard was just a tool.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I was in that situation once. We got captured by orcs and managed to check every room in their cave EXCEPT the one with all our gear in it. (We also lost the important magical sword we were supposed to be guarding. ) However, I feel that in a lot of games there is a sort of gentleman's agreement between players and DMs that you won't destroy the wizard's spell book.

In complete arcane there are rules for mastering a foreign spell book. So if you lose your book and manage to acquire a new one (theft, murder, purchase) you can make a check to master the book as your own.

I'm not sure if it's a real rule, but I've always played it where if the writer of a scroll or spellbook was there, they could help you decipher it and you would automatically succeed on the check.

Otherwise you could rely on Arcane Mastery or start off by scribing the spells you have already prepared and are still in your memory.

 

[jonesy]

..or start off by scribing the spells you have already prepared and are still in your memory.

That's a good one. I like the way you think.

 

[delericho]

That's an area of the rules that, like consulting a sage to identify items, reads much better than it actually is. I've never seen it come up, and would never have that happen in any game that I ran, because as the OP notes it is likely to utterly derail a campaign for months or even years.

(That said, I did consider an alternative where the Wizard didn't need to consult a spellbook for his daily refresh, but only between adventures. While on the adventure, he had access to any spells he had in any spellbooks he could consult, and no others. Oh, and he couldn't copy spells from one book to another. So, if he wanted access to some ultra-rare spell, he needed to go find the one and only spellbook that contained it. And if he later lost that book he'd lost that spell. But I never actually implemented it, so don't know how it would actually have worked.)

 

[Starfox]

A backup spellbook is not really a solution. It costs half as much as your ordinary spellbook. And you also have to pay for your "free" spells you get at level 1 and from leveling up. In 3E that is an untenable cost.

 

[Gomer212]

The easy answer: Don't lose your spellbook

However, the current playtest of Next has an interesting approach that I do somewhat enjoy. Basically, and without too much detail, wizards without their spellbook can still reprepare the spells they prepared the day previously. This way, losing your spellbook, while still being disastrous, would not render the entire character useless.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

This results either by:
-Very foolish PC
-DM choice

If it's the former, then serves the foolish PC right.
If it's the latter, I'd hope the DM has a plan to reunite or re-compensate. As well as keep it entertaining for the player who needs to creativity in the meantime.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I agree that an adventuring wizard would and should take absolutely every precaution, because they likely have an idea of what toll their travels can take on their spellbook, and how much crap they'd be in if they lost them. Still, low level characters often don't have the resources they need to adequately protect their books, I think. Also, considering RAW, items are supposed to make save checks if their possessor fails a save (if the attack/circumstance is likely to result in damage to the item).

I actually haven't ever implemented this, and was just wondering how it plays out when I checked, and was quite surprised! I agree with [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] in as much as I understand what they said; the rules regarding the situation seem internally consistent, and the high price is (IMO) probably fitting. But on top of the high price, the rules are very fiddly, and the implications for your campaign are problematic to say the least.